


a wolf in sheep's skin

by mnabokov



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal - Fandom, Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 09:09:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4095229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnabokov/pseuds/mnabokov
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal doesn't believe in God for a long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a wolf in sheep's skin

he does not believe in God for a long time, sees nothing beautiful in humanity and not enough faith in anything at all, doesn’t see his Lord in any of his half-hearted prayers nor any traits of a hero in someone who had supposedly allowed his entrance into a world like this

he reads the Bible because his mother tells him to and he only listens to her because she is real, is made of flesh and blood and bone and loving, kind and caring and compassionate, all these things the creator of this world must be

when he turns eight years old, his sister is taken away and he thinks – as he swallows her bones and memory and blood – that maybe some figment of God does exist and if he does then he has a wonderfully wicked job

the world is too torn and tilted and wrong for there to be no deities, he thinks and there must be someone out there pulling all of the wrong strings with an ugly smirk on their face

the boy wonders what it would be like to play God

he’s sixteen years old when he reasons that Jesus Christ must’ve been beat as a child to have had so much strength to endure such suffering – oh the suffering, the tears, the pain – how much guilt does Jesus carry knowing that his father had brought so much fear into this world?

he thinks that this pseudo-god, this vague titan must be a coward, hiding in the dead expanse of empty space

like the rage of a drunk man with an insatiable belly, Hannibal thinks, here is god, the God capital G-o-d and his pubescent son Jesus Christ, Jesus your father is a madman that lies wolf among his sheep, runs his teeth along the spine of the world just to taste blood as he pits his creations against one another

and God laughs with hollow satisfaction, blind to the fact that his men are mirrors of himself

here is God pouring everything he hates most about himself into a bottomless bottle and his son watches in transfixed horror as his daddy drinks himself to death every night

the boy wants to tell mankind: ‘this is your God and he is a reflection of you’

he who has created us, thinks Hannibal, has redone himself in a fruitless attempt to run away – he wants so very much to run away and yet he is still the sadist that cackles as his palms paint with thunder, nails flicking bits of lightning that split the sky in halves

here is the tormentor and the tyrant as he runs his finger along the roof of his own holy church, collapses the ceiling with a quick press of his thumb, slams the sky onto fifty-seven of his dedicated follows, fifty-seven vessels, fifty-seven pieces of himself and he feels nothing but comfort in the violence

the boy thinks that God grows drunk on his omnipotence, incompetent with his overflow of power

at the age of twenty-three, Hannibal thinks that God is just another man, just another king in a rotting castle surrounded by nothing but thorny vines and graves

Hannibal sees himself as a wolf among pigs – the human body is so frail, so thin, so fragile and breakable

as he slips into the skin of the Chesapeake Ripper, he feels next to nothing, slaughters and slays – there is nothing new in this situation and he is only doing God’s job for him as the Lord lies wasted in his kingdom in the clouds

and there are some days where he feels the endless anger of the sky coursing thick and hot and fast through his veins like disease – he lashes out and the feel of blood, the taste of flesh is absolutely divine – it feels so good and he can see the appeal of creating such a lovely place to play in

at the age of thirty-seven he no longer believes God is real

instead he sees the earth as his own, his pigs with their smooth necks bared, ripe and plump for the picking – he roves his tongue over earth’s crust and tastes blood and sweat and fear, treads lightly over moist soil and sees absolutely everything in front of him, watches the beauty of humanity sitting in the palms of his hands


End file.
